


Outside the Circle

by Tyellas



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Childbirth, Gastown, Gen, Implied Cannibalism, Intersex, Light femslash, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mostly Gen, Worldbuilding, hot or not?, mild body horror, obligatory Max Talks To A Ghost story, postapocalyptic sex toys, satellite station survivor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-15 03:46:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 18
Words: 16,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4591761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A pack of short pieces. Including: The Keeper of the Seeds and Miss Giddy meet on the edge of the Wasteland – Scabrous Scrotus is dead and that's a good thing - the Ace marvels over a glimpse of the Vault – Corpus and Rictus suffer the Immortan’s ambitions – Cheedo consoles the Dag – Furiosa observes the Doof Warrior – Furiosa weighs her violent past against redemption  - Max gives Miss Giddy’s ghost enough to go on - The Sisters meet the Citadel's Wretched artisans - and more with War Boys, post-apocalyptic survivors, and Mad Max villains.</p><p>One update. 18: <i>The People Eater's Guide to Pleasing People</i> - The Bullet Farmer and the People Eater have one final conversation as Major Kalashnikov and Richard Smith. Genfic, but with warnings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ladies of the Road

**Author's Note:**

> Collecting my shorter pieces from Tumblr and fic challenges. These can be read as canon-compliant standalones or as companion pieces to other stories I've written, _Weave a Circle_ , _A Handful of Dust_ , _Gastown Nights_ , _Citadel Nights_ , and _somebody out there_.

_The Keeper of the Seeds and the History Woman meet on the northern edge of the Wasteland._

The midday sun beat down hard on the trading post. Word had gone out through the Wasteland that guzzoline was in. The stuff was low-octane dregs, dripped out by Gastown for news or salvage, but it would keep your motors running.

Keeper of the Seeds hopped down from her bike and stretched, eyeing the line of waiting vehicles, never putting her rifle down. “Checking the tank,” she said. Her companion rider, swathed up to her smoky blue eyes in scarves, grunted and cocked a silver shotgun. Keeper knelt and ran her hands and her sharp eyes over the tank she towed behind her long, low motorcycle. No new nicks, rips, or rust –that was all right. Then again, you didn’t get rust if you didn’t get rain. Ever.

A shadow fell across her. She snapped up to see a ragged apparition against the sun. “Excuse me. I’ve been told up the line that you sell the wicked weed?”

Keeper lowered her rifle. “Used to. Wasn’t a good year for it, this year.” It hadn’t been for two thousand days, but no need to tell a stranger that. Even a wry-eyed woman her own age who was little threat. Unarmed and empty-handed, pinched and wrinkled, she looked pretty close to Wretched, except for the catalog ue of tattooed text that covered her skin. The tightly packed words loosened to swoop up one side of her face, and to trail like tears down the other side.

“Not at any price? I’ve got a dying man, up the line,” she added, gently.

“Haven’t got, can’t sell,” said Keeper, with a shrug. Curiosity got the better of her. “Nice ink you’ve got there. What do they call you?”

“The History Woman.”

“Call me Keeper.” Keeper put out her hand, and the other woman shook. Her hand was small, and the tattoos gave her skin a powdery, silky feel. Keeper retained a little grip to keep her close: if you looked hard, it felt like the tattoos would make sense any minute.

The other woman was just as curious. “Tell me, what were you, before?”

“Hydroponics, if you understand me. Helps if there’s water.”

The History Woman chuckled. “You win. Ph.D. on sabbatical. Permanently.”

“Piling it higher and deeper, we used to say.”

“It has its uses yet. Here’s something for your rifle. _My life had stood, a loaded gun, in corners, till the day, the owner passed, identified, and carried me away…To foe of his, I’m deadly foe, none stir a second time, on whom I lay a yellow eye, or an emphatic thumb. Though he than I may longer live, he longer must than I, for I have but the power to kill, without the power to die._ Emily Dickinson.”

“Make that ‘she’ and I like it. You a sharpshooter yourself?”

“I wish. I’ve spent five oldyears doing tattoos and helping people die.”

“Goddess knows we do the latter.” Keeper stamped the butt of her rifle.

Up the line, some vehicle honked its horn, four short times and one long. The History Woman took her hand back at last. “My ride. _Bon voyage!_ ” She went off at a fast walk, but not a run. Whoever she was traveling with, she trusted them, Keeper thought. Good.

The entire line of vagabonds began to shift. Keeper turned to her glaring companion and chirped, “I liked her! A pretty talker. All that ink makes her skin nice and soft, too. Shame she can’t shoot.”

The other rider rolled her eyes and muttered, “Aunty. Still can’t take you _anywhere_.”


	2. What A Lovely Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A piece for Free Day of Five Wives Week. The Immortan’s son, the vile warlord Scabrous Scrotus, is dead, and in the Wasteland, three of the Immortan’s former Wives rejoice. What a lovely day! Furiosa and two OFCs.

On the dubious part of the Gastown road, the Rig convoy was flagged down. “Looks like a War Boy. Waving his guzz signal,” the Ace said. By the red stripes in his paint and the armed cycle, this wasn’t a standard War Boy, but one of Scabrous Scrotus’ crew. They all came with lashings of extra malice, when they weren’t flat-out insane – like their Warlord boss.

Imperator Furiosa slowed reluctantly. “Stopping. How’s a Gastown boy out of guzzoline? I’ll talk to this one. Get ready to drive if he goes Scabrous on me.” The Ace sent the word down the line. The rest of the Rig crew were relieved to stay back. When she left the Rig, toting her rifle, she heard some other weapons sliding out, and didn’t gainsay it.

This one of Scabrous’ Boys was tamer than usual. Right away, he bawled, “Imperator! I got news! Scabrous Scrotus is dead!”

Furiosa stopped in her tracks. “He’s dead?”

“Some crazy scav piked him at one of the outposts. Out of signal range, far enough I just made the road. Supposed to bring this to the Immortan.” He held out a leather sack, dripping blood. Furiosa went over and peered in. That was Scabrous, all right. Or at least his head.

Scabrous was dead.

Scabrous was never going to praise her again.

Furiosa breathed deep. The Wasteland air had a burn to it. Somehow, it felt cleansing.

She thought briefly of her dark days as one of the Immortan’s wives, and the gray time afterwards, surviving in the depths of the Citadel. Even with that in her past, being praised by that corrupt madman for her raiding had been a nadir, black with possibilities. She looked at Scabrous’ bloody head a second time.

The Rig crew were watching. “The Immortan’s son, Scabrous, is dead!” she yelled. The crew bowed their heads over the V8 salute. She pointed at the Gastown War Boy. “Give him water and rations. I’ll see to his bike.” She saw to it, all right. After one minute, that bike wasn’t going anywhere. “Got a tank leak, here. Lash his bike to the Rig. You with the head, in the cab with me. We need to move.”

This news was _hers_. Scabrous was dead and she was going to be the one to tell the Immortan.

It wasn’t the revenge against the Immortan that she dreamed of. Still, the look on his face, when he heard, was going to refuel her for a long time. When the Rig was live again, she pulled the horn, triple hard, and shouted out her window. “WE FANG IT!”

* * *

At the Bullet Farm, a tall boy loped into one of the barracks. “Ma! Hey, Ma!”

Lucky Third levered herself a little upright on a bunk. “How was your day as a cadet?” she said, hoarsely. After years in the Bullet Farm plating plant, her lungs were hollow tatters.

Her son bounced over and leaned in close, and she approved. She was one of the former Wives of the Immortan: her son had grown up with secrets. “Big news today, Ma – the Gastown warlord’s dead. Scabrous Scrotus. The one who was the Immortan’s son.”

“Is he?” She forced herself to smile instead of cough. “That’s very good.”

“Why, Ma?”

Lucky Third needed a minute to breathe before she answered. “It doesn’t mean a chance of peace. Not in the Wasteland. At least the wars will be less mad than they have been. And I know you’ll live longer.”

Lying there dying, she was still proud of herself for making it away from the Citadel. As one of the Immortan’s castoffs, she had escaped both the Wretched and a short, miserable life as a degraded Citadel toy. The former Wives handed over to the Imperators never lived long. Here, she’d had over six thousand days, and a real life, by Wasteland standards. This news opened up the same possibility for her child. Since he’d become a cadet with the elite Bullet Farm military men, she’d been so worried.

She lay back down again, feeling her face smooth out. “It’s good,” she reassured him.

“I can tell. You look pretty, Ma.” He gave her silvering hair a stroke.

She looked up fondly at the tall boy, wearing his father’s goggles. “You look just like your Da did. Go get your rations. I’ll sleep, now.”

Lucky Third watched him run off, hungry and healthy, then closed her eyes. Her Bullet Farm name had fulfilled its promise. Three times lucky. Escaping the Immortan. Denying the Immortan a full-life son, bearing him for another, better man, instead. Knowing the Immortan’s own preferred son was dead, and her boy had an honest warrior’s chance, because of it.

She sighed, exhausted yet content. She truly could sleep now, forever.

* * *

In Gastown, the People Eater and his most trusted crony were at work breaking down Scabrous’ quarters. The crony took it as a shift in Gastown’s balance of power that she was by the People Eater’s side again, in a room full of weaponry and torture implements.

She had taken up the name The Jade, oldyears past, as a wife and favorite of the Immortan. Cast off, she had become the People Eater’s domineering mistress. His increasingly debased tastes led even her to speak out, and he had retaliated. With Scabrous gone, was she in favour again - and how far did she want to rise?

The Jade saw the People Eater’s beady eyes lingering on her. He hadn’t seen her unveiled since their disagreement. He’d handed her over to Scabrous for the warlord’s torturous pleasures, those thousand days ago. To this day, the People Eater didn’t know if she was a ruin under her veils, or still beautiful. It was her last great tease, not telling him. Some times, like this one, she could tell it was on his mind.

The People Eater passed her an item, occasionally, instead of barking it out to be recorded by the accounting lackeys, and it vanished under her voluminous veils. They’d agreed to split the takings later, sixty-forty. Testing the air, the Jade pointed silently at one of Scabrous’ scourges. The People Eater handed it to her without calling it out. He said, in his plummiest tones, “You’re taking this rather calmly, my dear.”

The Jade lifted her heavy eyelashes. “Am I? Done is done, I suppose.”

Voice thickening, he asked, “No problems with the curfew as my proxy, my dove?” Oh, yes, he was thinking about it. If ever she was to reel him back, this was the moment, in this quiet space of pain and riches, waiting for them to plunder it together.

The Jade turned away, concealing the scourge under her veils. Nobody deserved the chance to reject her twice. Besides, she knew where he’d been lately, the disgusting beast. “None at all. I had the curfew lifted, just like the signals said.”

The People Eater choked. “What? You lifted it? It was supposed to start at midnight!”

“Was it? _Silly_ me. I thought it was very intelligent of you, wanting Gastown to vent its steam, instead of exploding. Surely that’s more sensible.” In a few more sentences, she’d persuade him, implying that nobody could manage Gastown like he could.

She had her reasons. The Jade hadn’t dared lift the prostitutes’ levy to loosen Gastown up, even for one evening. Instead, she had opened her personal treasury and sent word to every shine joint and dance hall lurking in the shantytowns. They were to let the few Gastown women drink and revel for free until dawn. She knew the men who liked women would follow, and their friends among the Gastown mates. Tomorrow, her spies would tell her how it went, and she’d laugh. It would be the first step in her getting a new grip on Gastown. One that didn’t depend on her favour with Wasteland men.

Behind her veil, she smiled. The Jade couldn’t dance on Scabrous’ grave. But, by all that was unholy, she’d made sure that Gastown would, tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This short piece is related to my longer one, [Gastown Nights](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4515567/chapters/10270788), which includes the Jade and Lucky Third's son.


	3. The Ace and The Vault

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Ace returns to the War Boys after a glimpse of the Vault.

The Ace breathed deep in the heart of the Repair Boys’ depot. The solid tangs of oil, hot metal, and Citadel men made him feel grounded again, after a strange, strange morning. His sharp whistle split the air. “Oi! Rig Two Crew! Take ten.”

He stayed stoic as only five Boys extracted themselves from the garage pits and came over to him. “The Immortan told us true, boys. Our Imperator’s Up Top. I saw her this morning.”

Shoulder-smacks and side-punches of relief went around their tight circle. “What’s our Imperator doing up, there in the Green?”

“Better n’ the Green, boys. She’s guarding the Immortan’s shiny Wives.” The Ace unwrapped the scarf that had hidden his lumpy throat. “They got her on the inside with them, even. She let me have a look in. It’s like Valhalla up there, all right, green and water and light.” He hadn’t seen anything like it since he was a boy, himself, but the War Boys had stopped understanding the Before-time a generation back.

Even Morsov was so awed he forgot to be snarky. “Did you see the Wives?”

“Nah, they were all asleep, or I couldn’t have looked. The Immortan’s favorite is a full life and a half, Furiosa says. I did see the oldest woman in the world, up there to tell them stories all day and all night. So ugly she makes me look good, eh.”

The Boys laughed, and pelted him with more questions. “Is the Imperator a-healing?” “Will she even come back?”

“‘Course she will. Swears she’ll come back with our crew’s seven skulls from the Green Thumbs.”

The Ace tightened his mouth. Furiosa had staggered away from the latest road war as a Citadel hero, and he’d been on edge ever since. She’d been a favourite of the Immortan, his Bag of Nails, his War Bitch, and the Ace had seen that turn around – hard. He himself had stayed a War Boy for a reason. Immortan Joe was ruthless. Especially with Imperators who’d won glory that Joe considered his due. They were sent off on hot-zone salvage missions, or had a Treadmill counterweight fall on them, or just vanished.

But up Top, Furiosa was doing better than on a bleeders’ bench in the Organic Garage. It sounded like her biggest risk was only dying of boredom. The Ace had urged her to put up with it as long as she could. She’d nodded, though he could see she was wary in her bones. Then, she’d punched him on the arm.

The Ace saw that his audience had tripled. “All you Pups! Imperator Furiosa says you’d better behave, or she’ll send that ol’ woman down to give you the evil eye!” They screamed in glee at being remembered. “That’s all for you, mates. Back to it.”


	4. Big Guy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rictus suffers for his father’s ambitions - and with the Organic Mechanic in the way, there’s not much that Corpus can do.

The awful part of it was that last month, it had been the stars that obsessed Rictus.

Corpus had pointed out the winter meteor showers to his big, slow brother, and Rictus been fascinated. He joined Corpus every night for fourteen days to see the stars emerge, the moon change, and to hear the names of the constellations again and again. Rictus couldn’t remember any of the names himself, except for Orion, who he called The Big Guy. “That’s the Big Guy, and he has a big belt, like me and Dad.”

Leafing through Organic’s medical books, Corpus had decided that his brother was somewhere between retarded and autistic. (His own diagnosis still eluded him – everyone else had settled on _mutant_ long ago.) Rictus didn’t have much mind, and what he did have tended to get stuck on one thing for a long time. Often, he was happy enough. But when a five-year-old in a cage fighter’s frame got angry, bones got broken.

This month, Rictus had had a new obsession: the Wives inside the Vault. Rictus thought that one of the new ones had smiled at him, and man-child problems had been escalating ever since. Now Corpus was watching the Organic Mechanic put his brother together again after the Vault guard had beaten him to a pulp.

Corpus was grateful that his brother was one of the four people in the Citadel who rated some hoarded painkillers. “It’s your fault, Dad. If you didn’t want his jaw broken you shouldn’t have put the Bag of Nails in the Vault. Or brought Rictus in there in the first place.”

“It’s the only way he learns.”

Corpus snapped, “Why don’t you get a smart old woman to look after Rictus, as well? If your whores deserve to be sane, he does, too. Why don’t you get _him_ a Wife?”

The Organic Mechanic laughed once, sharply. “He’s got a point, Joe. That’d take the edge off Rictus big time. She wouldn’t even have to be pretty.”

The Immortan fumed, “I _need_ that edge. He can fight for me, if nothing else. He is one of my weapons.”

“Nothing like a big aggro guy who does what you say,” Organic agreed. “Especially if he’s your boy.”

“He’s too soft. This will harden him. I need him more than ever, since Scabrous died. Get him back into shape quickly, Organic.”

“But, Dad…” Corpus trailed off as the Immortan progressed away, faster than he could follow in his wheeled chair.

“Forget it, Corpus. Get your own situation solid,” Organic said. “Your dad isn’t going to come around on this.”

“He might if you didn’t gee him on.”

“What are you gonna do about it?”

Corpus lifted his chin. “I’m part of what’s keeping this place alive.”

“Yeah? So am I. And I-“ Organic flicked one of his syringes – “make it a party for your old man. No competing with that, is there?”

Corpus could only glare.

“No reason for us to be on the outs, Corpus. You need a good doc, too, to keep going. We might be running this place together one of these days. For now, your better half here is as patched up as he’s going to get, and I have some guzzoline tokens to grab. The Bag of Nails just won me a bet. Keep your brother out of trouble.” Organic walked off.

Corpus moved fast to give orders. Gesturing at his brother on a rusty gurney, he declared, “Bring him up to our rooms. Get more Boys. I want twice as many of you wheeling him. No jolting. Come on, Big Guy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _The Bag of Nails_ \- Citadel nickname for Furiosa.


	5. Consolation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cheedo consoles the Dag. Originally for a kinkmeme prompt. 
> 
> The prompt is both sweet and a useful trigger warning. _‘So, in the comics, Dag tries to protect Cheedo from Joe when Joe tries to touch Cheedo, and gets a beating for it, right? Well, give me the aftermath of that, kink meme! Give me Cheedo taking care of Dag for once, patching her up and smothering her with grateful hugs or kisses or anything else anon can think of.”_

Cheedo couldn’t believe that Miss Giddy was lecturing today, after how horrible it had been last night. The Dag had been hurt, really hurt, and Cheedo knew it was her fault.

After all that, Miss Giddy was ignoring the Dag, and her, too, and talking nonsense about the ground outside. “The ironsands are over there to the north. Can you see them – dark and striped? We used to mine them…” Everybody was peering out, except Furiosa, who was watching them from beside the Vault door.  
  
Couldn’t they see the Dag needed something? Heart throbbing, Cheedo got a cup of water in one of the pretty cups and brought it to the Dag, sitting at the piano bench for no good reason. “I can’t believe they’re talking about dirt when you’ve been hurt like this.”   
  
“I told them all to smeg off.” The Dag shook her head, refusing the cup.   
  
“You didn’t! Even F-furiosa?”  
  
“Specially her. If she's so tough she would have beaten the Immortan up instead of letting him put a hand on you.”  
  
Cheedo sighed in pained admiration. “You’re so brave.”   
  
For once, the Dag didn’t look brave. She looked small and crumpled and her cheek was turning unhappy colors. Cheedo sat down beside her and wrapped her in her arms. The Dag felt cold, and along with bruises rising on her face and one wrist, she still had the black eye makeup from the night before, and traces of white powder.  
  
Cheedo made a decision. “I’m going to wash your face.” She rolled off her sash and dipped it in the water. Softly, so softly, she traced it over the Dag’s brow, then along under her jaw, where tears and cosmetics had left dark streaks. She had to fold over the sash for a clean spot before washing the Dag’s purpling cheek.   
  
The Dag closed her eyes and sighed when Cheedo gently wiped away the last traces of dirty water. With both hands, Cheedo stroked the Dag's tangled platinum hair back. Then, Cheedo took off one of her white gauntlets, the ones Angharad had helped her sew, and tenderly slid it over the Dag’s hurt wrist.  
  
“Now you’re you again.”   
  
The Dag looked right at her and she braced herself.   
  
“Thank you,” her friend whispered. She rested her head on Cheedo’s shoulder.   
  
Together, they ignored the end of Miss Giddy’s odd lecture. “If you’re ever outside, look for water in the lowest ground. The lowest of the low.”


	6. Counting the Cost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting ready to run to the Green Place, Furiosa tries to get supplies and encounters the Doof Warrior.

Since Furiosa had descended from the Vault, nothing had been normal.

She was done with the Citadel, ready, at last, for the Green Place. Months guarding the Vault had given her the perfect tool for revenge: sweeping away the Immortan's Wives with her when she went. She looked around her former home with a traitor's eye. The depths of the Citadel had gone from cool refuge against the sun to dark and murky; the War Boys, from her people to raw strangers; her tools and guns, rescued from her foot locker, seemed shrunken and dirty. The repaired, updated War Rig was the most unreal of all, a vision, with most of the improvements she’d learned to want driving the old one. She tore herself away from it to go through her Imperator’s duties, her heart always racing, ready for a fight that never came.

Fourteen days ago, she’d begun to learn the new supply runs and crew. Yesterday, Immortan Joe’s whims had allowed her to make a deal for passage with the Rock Riders. The two dreams of the Green Place and vengeance burned inside her like a bushfire. The deal yesterday made them real, unstoppable.

She’d already decided to divert on the Gastown run, when the Rig would be packed to capacity with food and water. For more durable items, today was her last chance to loot the Citadel.

Furiosa went to the salvage depot with a few bribes tucked into her pockets. The depot was wide, for a Citadel space. She went through the clothing first. It didn’t look good. More than one garment disintegrated in her hands. In her vision of revenge, the Wives, stolen away, were defiant and grateful, not miserably sunburned. She went up to the old quartermaster’s counter, rolled a can of chrome at him, and asked, “Any leather jackets around?”

He stopped the bribe on the counter with his left hand. Then he scratched his empty right arm socket. “Nothin’, Imperator. Salvage ain’t what it used to be, when it’s there at all. I’ll go so far as to say the ‘pocalypse has had its final closing down sale. Bring in a hide and another round o’ chrome and I’ll do what I can.” He looked her over to add, neutrally, “If you can skin up a big guy, the one hide would do you.” She hid her disgust and let him keep the chrome. “Make yourself at home,” he said, and returned to tossing dice.

There were no books. There wasn’t even any paper. Furiosa had hoped to send a message up to the Vault in a book, sent in as a gift from the Immortan – that way, they could prepare, as much as such soft creatures could. And she wanted to stop seeing Angharad’s horrified face when she closed her eyes. The Immortan was very limited in what he bestowed on his Wives: books, fabric, sparkling things, fruit. Nothing in the depot looked suitable.

The weapons corner was mulch, too, down to old kitchen knives and the looted farm rifles that the War Boys hated. She was glad she’d hoarded guns and saved the gearshift knife from the previous Rig. The wooden-stocked rifles made her wonder, for an instant, if she could get one of those to the Vault. The Wives couldn’t handle it, but there was another woman there…In the green-shadowed memories of Furiosa’s childhood, all old women were crack shots with rifles just like those.

At the depot door, the lackadaisical quartermaster had started up. The Doof Warrior, the Citadel’s silent, blind, sly musician, was brought in by his drummers. Furiosa granted him _warrior_ without a second thought. He was as much of a Wasteland target on the Doof Wagon as she was driving a Rig. The drummers led him to a table in the center of the depot, littered with objects Furiosa had overlooked. Furiosa stepped behind a rack of plastic bottles to watch.

First, the Doof Warrior had seized something like his guitar, but much smaller. It looked absurd in his big, six-fingered hands, but he wrung tinny music out of it somehow.

Next, he found a hollow, painted, dotted length of wood. After feeling its length, he lifted his mask and sealed his lips against the small end. It only took him a moment of puffing before he had it moaning a long, eerie note. The drummers flinched, shook their heads, and took it away.

They replaced it in his hands with a device like a coiled brass engine. He adored it, caressing it with a toothy grin before sending out a blare of notes. Furiosa watched as he carried away the chunk of metal that could have been an engine or a tool. This little waste, again enabled by Immortan Joe, added another splash of guzzoline to fuel her anger. She was right to throw in with the Wives, fighting to live.

Furiosa snatched up the least dilapidated rifle she could find and that hollow, painted instrument. It would pass as a gift for the Vault inmates, could conceal both a message and a gun.

Furiosa slipped out, avoiding eye contact with the quartermaster. With this new plan, she couldn’t grease his palm any further. Bribing a path to the Vault’s door was expensive. The last time she’d done it, it had been to win a visit up there for the Ace. Thinking about her faithful second, a rare good Citadel man, stilled her firestorm of excitement and defiance.

And she tallied her own cold cost.


	7. Rise and Redemption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Furiosa remembers how she rose through the ranks of the Citadel - and why she and the Citadel need redemption.   
> *  
> *  
> *  
> WARNINGS for dark tone, sexual assault, and violence. Originally for an Extreme Darkfic meme fill, if that gives you an idea.

Furiosa was reeling. Cheedo had cornered her to ask, shyly, “Now that we run the Citadel, we’re giving water and some food to the Wretched. Maybe, maybe if we send the Buzzards some water and a little food, too, they won’t want to attack us?”

This young woman didn’t understand the Buzzards at all. That they didn’t attack only for food and water. They were war-addicted, nihilistic sadists.

Furiosa understood them too well. She remembered why.

* * *

Waiting for them to shove her onto the Treadmill as a sterile failure. Looking down in horror at the dusty ground, the nightmare of the Wretched mob. Taking the half-minute when backs were turned to vanish into the base of the War Tower. There had to be food and water down there, had to be something she could do.

Snapping one night in the depths, slitting the throat of her protector, her mentor, her second rapist. Showing up at the repair bay the next day, stone-faced, wearing his tool belt and blued-steel pistol. “He died last night. They’re mine, now.” Unholstering one of the wrenches. “Want a hand there?”

Doing war. Clinging to the back of a vehicle, flying over the plains, holding on with her left hand while shooting with her right, screaming.

Afterwards, reeling with chrome, joining in as her drivemates harassed a just-whited War Boy too pretty for his own good. Watching what her drivemates did to him while he screamed.

Having to kill one of her drivemates the next week, when he remembered her presence there too well.

(the excitement, the fever, the power of it)

Leading her first raid, having earned Imperator with her left hand. She was the one who hauled a woman back as a prize, handed her over saying, “In one piece.” _Untouched_ wasn’t accurate.

Another raid. Breaking down a Buzzard camp. Their stinking captives, mindless with fear, in those cages, worse, on a roasting spit. She’d given the order to kill them as useless, and one of them mouthed, “Thank you.”

Yet another raid. All fire and blood. The settlement holdouts torched themselves rather than surrender. The fire burned like madness, oil and old buildings and children held inside screaming, the heat sending her Imperator’s black streaking down her face.

(the numbness, putting the boot in an extra time to try and feel alive, as she once had)

A road war as one of the prime drivers, taking the tanker rig screaming along behind the pursuit vehicles, darting and ramming. Detouring to run over opponents.

Lucking into a decent crew. Arguing with the Organic Mechanic over bribes. “Fine. You look after my crew first, give them the best, and I’ll pike that guy for you. This better be good for a thousand days.” They shook on it. His hand was sickeningly moist.

Doing war, as a leader. Take the point, eyes on, keep going, leave him, leave them, they’re dead.

(the nightmares, the silence, the foreboding no road warrior could ignore)

The meetings. Sitting in a privileged spot, between the hardened killers and their foul old leaders. Looking down the table at the foulest one, her first rapist. Hearing them all speaking of the Boys below as expendable dupes, planning war to follow war. Without end. According to them, there could never be an end.

* * *

Furiosa smacked her right hand against a stone wall to force herself present. Cheedo was looking at her rescuer, trustingly, waiting for an answer. “Cheedo. I will. Get them some food, water, something extra. Don’t tell the Council until we see how it goes.”

Cheedo’s face lit up. “Thank you, Furiosa! You’re the best!” The young woman gave her a spontaneous hug and danced off, a beam of light in the dark Citadel corridor.

Redemption was keeping Cheedo from knowing any more of war and rape than she did already. Dragging the War Boys away from the guns and fevers that killed them young. Stopping the raids. Ending the wars. She’d find out how to defend the Citadel without sacrificing its people.

Cheedo’s idea opened the door. Some food, some water, laced with something extra for the Buzzards. What was making them so crazy in the Infirmary right now?

Cholera. That should do it.


	8. Desert Faces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A young woman of the Wretched considers the women of the changed Citadel, including the Sisters, the Milking Mothers, and the War Girls – and keeps a secret on Furiosa’s behalf.

Rabbit couldn’t believe that she, once one of the Wretched, was at the very top of the Citadel, attending a Council meeting. “We need you,” the History Man had said. “You’ve got the best hand out of all of us for the diagrams.”

Rabbit managed to ask, “You need me to ---” She made the rapid, complicated hand gesture she used to indicate drawing. With her cleft lip and palate, some words were just too much trouble.

“Joe-damn right,” said Corpus. “History here can’t draw large scale to save his life. And, me putting a Wretched woman up in front of the Council as part of my team? They’ll love that. I can count on three more days of not getting tossed out a window.” When the History Man began to lecture Corpus, Rabbit dashed away, ignoring their bickering to hunt down some clean chalk. The History Man was going on about how the Wretched were people and citizens now. Rabbit had been one of the most Wretched of all, and she didn't care about the fine points, she was going to that meeting to do what she did best.

At the Council meeting, Rabbit looked around the beautiful domed room they called the Vault. Before the fall of Immortan Joe, she would never have been in the Citadel at all, let alone here. Her cleft palate had marked her life. One of her earliest memories was of being thrown down outside the Citadel, consigned to the Wretched. When she did have food or water, she had had to eat slowly, so slowly, lest she choke herself through her split palate. Speaking was hard. Nothing stopped her from listening, or thinking.

Rabbit remembered when the History People had arrived. The Before-time ancients, their smarts and wordburgers rejected by the Citadel, had settled in amongst the Wretched. She began to sit near while they herded a growing crowd of children, telling their unending stories. They didn’t mind. To help them keep the children in one place, she had drawn pictures in the sand, vehicles and people and animals. Soon, she was drawing what the History People asked her to, as well. Letters, and basic math, the shape of the land they lived on, and the clouds of the atom bombs.

Wretched life got harder as Rabbit grew taller. Twice, War Boys scouting for girls grabbed her narrow waist or soft brown hair, only to kick her away, cursing, when they got a look at her from the front. In a terrifying about-face, the Citadel had stolen the History Woman. On the great day when the Immortan died and the Citadel sent water down twice, the History Man had been taken by the Citadel, too. But he’d come back for her, saying, “They’ve changed, up there. _Wordburger: children of the revolution!_ Some other girls in there were the History Woman’s students, too. They need you - this place needs all the brains it can get.”

Their first stop inside the bewildering stone corridors had been to see the Citadel’s new healer. “She’s one of the Vuvalini.” Rabbit recognized the one of the strangers who had been slipping among the Wretched like dusty shadows, listening and watching. The Vuvalini had gently examined Rabbit’s mouth, inside and out. Then, she said that if Rabbit ever had any pain in her ears, she must come up to the Infirmary, right away. The Citadel’s healers caring about the Wretched? There really had been a revolution.

Rabbit learned that the stolen History Woman had been delivered to the Immortan’s shiny Wives. She had been brought to meet them, too. Being the History Woman’s former students turned out to be all they had in common. The Wives – no, the Sisters - talked amongst themselves in one united, intimidating flow. They pressed her for stories without leaving the time Rabbit needed to manage spoken replies. At least they had stories about the History Woman, in return. Now, if they passed, they said hello and Rabbit nodded and waved. Then, she got back to work.

The Citadel pump works had fascinated Rabbit. To any of the Wretched, they were life itself. It had turned out that, after listening to History People for thousands of days, they weren’t hard for Rabbit to understand, especially with the pictures and books about them. She was skinny enough to get into pipe spaces. Her mind could hold the pictures about the works until she needed them. In a corner of the Wellhead, she’d found a discarded black mask that hid the lower half of her face. With it on, she’d leaned over to see herself reflected in dark water, mouth a mystery, eyes wide. For the first time in her life, she’d liked her appearance. She’d polished the mask and her tools before going up to the Council.

Of course, she’d never be really good looking. She gazed admiringly at the curvy cabal of Milking Mothers, sitting to one side, grand and silky. The Sisters were shiny, but most of the Citadel men, inside and out, would hand over their guzzoline for a chance with the Mothers. The Council had had to issue an edict against duelling for the right to approach them.

In her Wellhead gear, Rabbit looked more like the War Girls. A few had emerged from the War Boys in the days when the Citadel was remaking itself. At the Council, they stood pale and wary at the back. Rabbit narrowed her eyes at them. Two of them had let her know they resented a Wretched female getting a blackthumb’s tool belt. In the ensuing scuffle, she gave them as good as she got. Amongst the Wretched, a girl of age didn’t survive without learning to fight dirty. Maybe they’d get along better after another fight or two. Rabbit sighed, tired at the thought. 

The History Man said, “Could we have the diagrams, please?”

It was time. Rabbit inhaled and went to the blackboard. Something sure possessed her hands as she sketched out the three Citadel towers from above. She used chalk and a string to draw a perfect circle around them, then a second circle, out wider. The History Man began to point at her drawing and talk.

Going to the other side of the board, she began the more complicated sketch that demonstrated ongoing problems with the Citadel’s well. Someone left their council seat to come and watch, hovering. Imperator Furiosa! The terrifying, thrilling warrior and liberator. She had killed Immortan Joe and opened the Citadel to the Wretched – with only one hand.

Rabbit knew Furiosa’s secret. But she would never tell. Yesterday, at Furiosa’s behest, she had opened the Wellhead door, a shortcut to the sterile ground outside, and watched Furiosa leap down. As Furiosa stood outside, looking away from the Citadel, Rabbit had seen her expression change. She had been taken by what the Wretched called the desert face. It was an absent, long-seeing look to the horizon. You could never tell who would suddenly wear it, or when. It meant that one day, one night, one dawn, Furiosa would go out into the Wasteland and never return. Some piece of Furiosa was out there, in the sands. She would have to go and find it. If she could. The Wretched said that half who felt the call went out to live, and half to die. It was a hard fate.

Rabbit hadn’t looked out at the Wasteland since – well, she didn’t. She’d spent her life turned towards the Citadel. Now, she was part of its flowing heart. She would help the pumps run as long as they could, after the old History Man and frail Corpus and desert-hearted Furiosa were gone.

The diagram was complete. Rabbit stepped aside.

In front of everybody, Furiosa said to her, “Thank you.”

Rabbit lived, and died, and lived again, all in an instant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Furiosa's Wellhead visit is described in another fic of mine, [A Handful of Dust](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4456166).


	9. The Virtue of the Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max finds himself unbending to a little old woman at the Citadel. One of the Wretched? Has to be…unless he's picked up a ghost along the way.

Some nights, the Citadel was more haunted than others. Max didn’t like being inside the Citadel at the best of times, and he was failing at conversation. He craved air. The Skullmouth was the closest aperture.

Max perched there, behind the water levers. He was alternating between some satisfaction that a feral blood bag was in the old ruler’s catbird seat, and a hovering anxiety. A sense he hadn’t finished something. Feeling twitchy, he jimmied a pale desert pebble out of his boot treads, heard it tap down on the Citadel stone.

“I always wondered how it looked from up here,” said a clear, dry voice behind him.

He glimpsed a small, white-haired woman in the shadows. Probably one of the Wretched who’d turned out to be useful. She was so old, it looked like her wrinkles had wrinkles.

“You, uh, new?” Max asked. She came closer, pulling a dark wrap around her. He was glad she had something. The night had grown cold, suddenly.

“Yes and no. Once, I was like you - a resident of the apocalypse’s roads. When you keep moving, you can always tell yourself: it will be better when I get there…”

She was right about that. He gave her as close as he got to a smile.

“There’s unhappy people here tonight,” she said, gently. “Should I be worried?”

“No. Nothing for you to be scared of. They had a bad Council meeting. Discussing a thing called the Anthropocene.” Max shifted. “It means we killed the world. That there’s too much that’s broken for us to fix.”

She said, “Sometimes it’s not for us to fix. We survive, and help the next generation stay alive for what comes next. Unforeseen.”

Max shook his head, feeling the night’s chill sinking to the bone. “You’re new up here. Furiosa and the Sisters, they’re all about fixing it.”

“Are they, now.” She asked, “What about you?”

“I go my own way. Head back to the road, see what I can find for her. Them.”

“Perhaps even a green place?” Max turned, feeling his neck bristle in the cold.

He could only see her moonlight-bleached profile, deep wrinkles complicated as writing, turned out towards the Wastelands. “Do you know, I think you might find it.” She gestured out. “It’s sad out there. But it’s getting better at last. The new world is coming. I’ve been in the eastern sands. There’s so much life out there, if you wait quietly. I even saw a pack of golden dingoes.” She chuckled, dryly. “The crows are more intelligent. Still, I preferred the dingoes. They had the manners to wait.”

Something about her tapped the edges of his memory. “You talk like the History Man. Do you know him?”

A smile curved under her hood. “The old rascal. Our lucky last. Yes, I knew him. Is he nearby?”

“Not in here. On the ground, tonight.”

“Positively close, after the desert.” The old woman was heading to the cave’s interior door. “Enough for me to go on.”

The door swung open. Someone had lit the inside hallway so brightly that she was hard to see. “It’s a beginning, here. They’ve got what they need. Furiosa’s ruthless strength. The girls and their will to change. History, if they’ll listen, this time. And you. Bring them the virtue of the road – hope.”

Max blinked against the light. “What?”

But she was gone.

Max was stunned by a huge yawn. Suddenly, he could sleep for a week.


	10. Where's My Jet Pack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A car wreck of a moment in the Vault among Imperator Furiosa, Miss Giddy, and Toast the Knowing. Wordburger: where’s my jet pack?

The night before, Miss Giddy had dreamed of coffee.

Most dreams like that had tailed off, forty-five years after civilization’s fall. This one felt more normal than what she woke to: life as an imprisoned postapocalyptic duenna, tutoring a warlord’s prized breeders. Disappointment, paired with the urge for a decent flat white, gave her a prickly edge.

The curriculum she’d set up the night before to keep her fellow inmates amused and sane seemed pallid. On a whim, she ditched it. She spent the morning giving the young women the poem _My Last Duchess_ and seeing what they made of it. Around noon, she changed over to the Greek origins of the word _tyrant_.

Stories of war drew their guard to her station early.

Nobody dared greet her. Imperator Furiosa, as forced to the Vault by the Immortan as any of them, had been ignoring the other women for many days. This had begun to shift. She and Miss Giddy were newly, barely on speaking terms. Miss Giddy remained cautious. A little attention from one of the Immortan’s Imperators could go very badly. Today, picking up on Miss Giddy’s peppery mood, the girls seemed determined to give her something to see.

First, the Dag, after writhing through the lessons like an impatient snake, asked, “Can I have the tattoo kit today? Please?” Miss Giddy had been demurring since their guard had been posted.  The little defiance matched Miss Giddy’s mood, and she handed it over. Really, if the Immortan hadn’t wanted his Wives tattooed, he shouldn’t have picked her as their teacher – let alone imprisoned her. The Dag whisked her best friend Cheedo off to sit by the windows. As much as her mediocre vision allowed, Miss Giddy watched Furiosa watching them. Would Furiosa intervene?

In contrast, Angharad and Capable had spent the lesson sitting side by side, melted against each other’s shoulders. When Furiosa had emerged, Angharad had wrapped a defiant arm around her friend. Now, after a moment’s whispering, they slipped up the mezzanine stairs together, hand in hand. Miss Giddy wanted to be pleased. They were young, and they cared for each other, and it would have been a sign of life and hope - if Furiosa hadn’t turned to watch them ascend. Miss Giddy caught that Imperator-blackened face casting glances upstairs, then towards the window, processing which set of young women was more out of bounds.

Miss Giddy addressed her one remaining student, Toast. “I hope they have a _nice rest_. Pregnancy is so tiring.”

Toast said, low and grim, “Careful.”

Miss Giddy went on, raising her voice. “They remind me of when I was young. When I was your age, I had freedom. I went where I liked and saw who I liked. I had a car, I had Tinder, and yes, there were boys. Most importantly –”

“You drove a vehicle? You?” Toast, so tough the moment before, flinched. Miss Giddy didn’t blame her. It was the first time either of them had heard Furiosa speak during daylight.

Miss Giddy turned and responded, smoothly, “A little red Mazda.”

Furiosa succumbed to curiosity. “How much horsepower did you have?”

Miss Giddy clicked her tongue. “Oh, I don’t know. It was one point three liters, if that’s any help.”

“That’s not a real vehicle,” Furiosa snapped.

“It was a city runaound. We went to the mall and chased boys,” Miss Giddy replied. “I shared it with my sister.”   

There was a moment’s silence. 

Unexpectedly, Toast chimed in. “I used to drive, too. I wish I had a vehicle. Even a low horsepower one.” She shot an angry glance at Furiosa.

Miss Giddy muttered, “ _Wordburger: where’s my jet pack? Where’s my flying car?_ ”

“What does that mean?” asked Toast.

“It was a Before-time saying. It meant the future wasn’t as chrome as we expected.” Miss Giddy cold-shouldered Furiosa to focus on Toast. “You, out of all of us, deserve the future we were trying to have. The future with genetically engineered healing, self-driving cars, intelligent clothes. Computers building whatever we could imagine. Universities online, and then some - data wired into our brains. Learning without end.” She sighed. “I’m sorry.”

Toast said, perplexed, “You didn’t do anything.”

“Yes. That was part of the problem. All the people like me, while the world was falling.”

Furiosa had shifted closer, silent but intent. Toast glanced away, stiffening, the same way she did when the Immortan entered the Vault. “Help me up, dear. My knees, you know.” Toast hopped up and got Miss Giddy upright, then, at the older woman’s nudge, slipped off to join the Dag and Cheedo. Miss Giddy slowly erased the Vault’s blackboard, wiping away the words there. _Tyrannos. Tyrannis. Tyrant._

Furiosa subsided into her usual remoteness. Miss Giddy exhaled. What would have happened if Furiosa had asked Toast about her driving? Her past? This was what the Vault had brought two intelligent, fierce, Wasteland women to: infertile posturing, petty glances, stubborn silence.

Still, it could have gone worse. When the Imperator first stalked into the Vault, any word from her had seemed as impossible as a jet pack. As freedom. And now? A few words for her; a breath of freedom here and there, for the girls. A yearning for horsepower, unfulfilled.

Miss Giddy drew the shield of a remote, meditative expression around her, to hide her intense planning. 


	11. Galleria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Handing over the Citadel, Corpus takes the Sisters "shopping" in the Galleria Immortum - and they meet the Citadel's desperate Wretched artisans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on this jaw-dropping bit of canon from the official history of the War Rig:
> 
>  
> 
> _…the “Galleria Immortum”. There a handful of The Wretched kept chained in the dark chamber labor to make objects of art in testament to the might of Immortan Joe. They toiled night and day, using anything and everything to make fetishes, car ornaments, even steering wheels. Working until their hands bleed to produce something - anything - that would please the tyrant, for if he approved, at least they would be given sustenance to last them until his next visitation. If not, they were cast out from The Citadel, usually from a height of several hundred feet…_

The day’s light was beginning to fade when the door of the Galleria Immortum creaked. The Wretched artisans within, clustered near the slots that allotted scant light and air into their Citadel cavern, scrambled to attention.

“Which is it? Who’s out there?” hissed Righty, downing her tools. “The Immortan?”

“Sounds like th’ son. Corpus,” said Canker. “Means water, at least.”

“Shhhh! Get ready! Get your works out!”

They hustled as much as their chains would allow. Each of the seven artisans arranged their latest creations in front of them, listening to the locks opening and Corpus’ voice. The artisans bowed their heads, squeezing their eyes shut or looking at their waiting creations, all meant as glory to the Immortan. One of the Wretched couldn’t help moaning, “Please notice me, please…” Righty and Canker glanced at the pleading artisan and exchanged a shrug. Nobody else could sew like Sasha, but she remembered the Before-Time too much. They all fell silent to hear if Corpus had brought his father.

Corpus’ reedy voice was rough, today, as if he’d been talking a lot. “This is the Galleria Immortum. Lots of the salvage winds up in here. This is to keep it safe. If you’re in charge now, everything in here belongs to you.”

“First thing we’ll do is rename it. It’s just the Galleria, now,” a young woman said. Other new voices chimed in, all young, all female, exclaiming over the rejected artworks on the entry shelves and the waiting salvage. The artisans trembled at the strange voices. They knew the Immortan had Wives: the artisans had learned the hard way that it was death to think about them long enough to depict them. And at least one Imperator was a woman: all the Wretched knew that you glanced at any Imperator at your peril. 

One of the female voices, flatter than the others, said angrily to Corpus. “You didn’t tell us there were people here.”

“Where do you think stuff comes from? They make everything in here. Sigils, containers, car ornaments, jewelry for the Milking Mothers, you name it. If my Dad liked their works, he’d give them rations. If he didn’t, nothing, or he’d throw them off a long drop.” 

“More slaves! Locked up, like your father locked us up!” the woman snapped. “There’s no end to it here.”

“Slaves? They begged to come up,” Corpus retorted, “You Wives say that you can’t own a human being. What about when the human beings give themselves to you?”

“That’s called trust,” said a second woman, her head topped with fire.  “You’re trusting us by telling us about this place. Now we need to trust you back – all of you. You can show you deserve it by giving us the keys to these chains.”

Corpus smiled with one half of his mouth. “All right. But I’ll tell you one thing. These people made those belts my Dad locked on you. Still want to unlock them?” He held out a cunning key.

The four women exchanged glances. Then the white-haired one whipped the key out of Corpus’ hand, spat in front of his chair, and began cramming the key into the nearest artisan’s ankle lock.

The second woman’s turn-toed shoes entered the artisans’ line of vision. “We’re the Sisters. We’re here with news. The Immortan is dead.” She paused, to let this sink in. “We’re in charge of the Citadel, now, us and a new Council. Corpus says you came up from the Wretched to make things for the Immortan. How long have you been here?”

They all shuffled. Nobody could answer. The days blended together, in the Galleria, a blur of giddy hunger, inspiration, creation, and despair.

The woman tried again.  “Do you want to leave? Be free again?”

That was easier. As the chain came off her left leg, Righty mumbled, “Bit hard out there for the likes of me.” She lifted her right leg’s stump.

“Make stuff in here. If I can’t make stuff I feel buggy. ‘S good,” Canker said, twisting a bit of wire to keep himself calm.

“I can sew. Embroider. Please don’t throw me out to die!” Sasha sprawled among her loosed chains and began to sob.

The fourth Sister knelt by her, reaching out golden hands to console. “You can stay! They can all stay, can’t they? We’ve got enough food?“

“They’re doing stuff. It’s productive,” said the first, hard-voiced Sister. “More than I ever saw old Joe do.”

“Blessed! Blessed!” Sasha moaned. “Take our art. It’s all for you!”

The first Sister cast a sharp eye over the works and hefted a rippled, leather-sheathed steering wheel. “That’s good. Grippable. Better than that wire-wrapped one in the Gigahorse.”

The gleaming pale beauty who’d unlocked them picked up one of Righty’s items. It was a recycled leather container, studded with medallions and bottlecaps, intended to cradle an oxygen tank. “I can use this in the gardens.” Righty twisted in combined pleasure and shame. She remembered crafting the leather padding on _those_ evil, toothed belts, while kerosene torches lit their cave night and day.

The fire-topped Sister went to the remaining artisans. After surveying their creations, she took a length of white cotton embroidered, again in white, with gears and engine pipes. “This is beautiful. Thank you.” Sasha, who had worked on it with fearful caution, gasped, croaked, and leaned back.

The last one spontaneously picked up one of Canker’s pieces, a metal skull with articulated brass wings shimmering and vibrating where its ears would have been, ready to be mounted on a car hood. “She’s heavy. Can we ask you to make different things?”

Canker was spinning his wire frantically in his hands. Righty jumped in. “Anything. What don’t you like?”

“No belts, that’s for sure. And no more of this guy,” said the first Sister, kicking a wire-inlaid carving of the Immortan himself. “He’s out of here.” All the women laughed.

“I’ll take that,” said Corpus, huffily. One of his War Pups snatched it up and brought it to him. He held it in one stunted hand, brooding, while the women took a final look around. Eventually, he said, “Better get food and water in here tonight, if you want artisans alive tomorrow. It’s been a while.”

The fire-headed Sister took a deep breath. “Noted, Corpus. Food, water, a healer check, the lot.”

They spoke amongst themselves. “We can talk about having them as the custodians with the locks on the inside once this place settles. A couple more days?“

“I’m not crying. There’s - there’s soot in my eye.”

“It’s been a long day, Cheedo. Let’s keep moving.”

The reeling artisans barely registered their departure. It was several minutes after the door closed before anyone dared disrupt the silence.  

“Make for them?” Canker asked.

“Looks like it.”

“Stuff with them in it?”

Righty shifted, daring to start moving herself across the space. “I…think we can, now.”

The artisans looked at each other, alight with inspiration.

“Back to work, everybody!”


	12. Shafted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by the very first line in Splinter's great (adult Furiosa/Max) story, [What he wants"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8681662): "Anyone who has been through Gastown or Bartertown has seen strap-ons for trade." How could I resist writing about Gastown's strap-on vendor? Because when the Citadel comes to Gastown, the most ambitious vendor in the place is ready and willing to trade with the Citadel - especially Furiosa!

Today might be the day!

Patch swiped back her quiff and took a deep breath. The raw Gastown atmosphere burned her throat, waking her up more. They were almost ready. By the standards of Gastown commerce and its sundown start, they might have been opening at the crack of dawn. The stall looked good in the late afternoon light. Patch’s wares were dark, sturdy, promising, made to blend into a Wastelander’s survival gear. Her granny had said, "Now the world's ended, chook, people still need two things. They need to live and they need to feel alive. So barter them something that helps one of the two." Patch had followed the old woman's footsteps with the second.

Patch’s mate held up two similar harnesses. “Spiked ones in front? Or plain?”

“Plain. She likes plain stuff.”

“Maybe Furiosa’s different now she’s got the Citadel. Could’ve gone all fussed and fancy.”

“If she shows up here it’s _Imperator_ Furiosa, remember. Still…could be right. Go on, mix ‘em up.”

Her mate nodded and smoothed out an unadorned, brown-tanned harness. Patch stood some more merchandise around it. Any of the shafts Patch made would fit perfectly into any of the harnesses, for a ride that didn’t take any guzzoline. She was proud of her creations. Everything had a name. It had been busy enough that Patch had held back some of the better, most smooth-cast items for this day. She put out a baby Decapito, a tall, skinny Thunderstick and the popular, chunky V8. After a thoughtful moment, she put out a few stubby dirt-road plugs. Of course there were endless rumors and dirty jokes about why Furiosa had stolen the Immortan's former Wives. But there were all those War Boys, too. You never knew.

A shadow fell across their booth. “You open yet?”

Patch frowned. A potential customer was taking in the wares with his one blue eye. He was tall, strong, masked and covered face to toe in shiny black leather that promised barter to spare. Any other day, he’d be an ideal customer. But not today.

“Working on it,” Patch grunted. He got her shoulder as she turned to adjust the harnesses, placing a pure black one on top.

He annoyed her by picking it up immediately, then reaching for the nastiest shaft of the lot, the ridged Agitator. “I’m here for the works. What’s this made of, anyway?”

Patch was getting this question a lot, recently. You’d think it was obvious, since she was next to the tire repair shack by the Gastown bridge. But no, people were asking. Almost like they gave a damn about the future since the Triumverate fell. Weird. “The leather’s fresh, not salvage. And the shafts, they’re good stuff. Melted, cast, boiled clean. But, fella, we’re still setting up.”

The man glared. “Do you know who I am?”

This bloke gave her tongue a salty edge. “I know who you’re not. You’re not Citadel. They’re coming in for the Amnesty today. We’re opening psycho early to catch their eye, let the Imperator deal with us with some privacy. After that, you can be the first.”

The man’s eye narrowed in harsh amusement. “Why do you want her barter so bad? ‘Cause you can’t have her? Or is this your best way to stick it to a Citadel breeder?”

Patch turned square to him and growled, “Triumverate’s down. Gastown lost its old boss and my best customer! But my stuff’s still the best!” Patch picked up one of the shafts and bent it near double for emphasis. It bounced back when she released it, uncracked, unbroken. “The Citadel’s Imperator deals with me, everyone will know it. My name will be made.”

The man jeered, “Give it up! You’ll never get her barter.”

Patch’s mate interrupted. “Here they come now!”

Patch and her would-be customer came to a stop while the Citadel’s small convoy drove over the Gastown bridge. They watched as the Citadel crew disembarked, was greeted, began to walk into Gastown.

Imperator Furiosa looked more splendid than ever. Patch was as much of a fighter as any woman on the Gastown street, tough and fast-mouthed, chunkier than the Imperator. She had seen Furiosa in the past. Before, Furiosa had blended into the other top dog fighters, tanned skin and soot and baldness, hard, absent gaze. Today, though, Furiosa’s cool presence made Patch stand up straight and quiet. Furoisa was different, now. She was unafraid to stand out. She had a steely eye and a rifle half-ready, protecting the other two Citadel women in the crew. Those two were the ones who spoke. After a Wasteland drive, none of the three were any cleaner or less edgy than the watching Gastown scrappers and oilbirds. Yet their clear gazes and the way they stood together promised something more. Something tied up with customers wanting to stay unlumped for longer, barter being good enough for Patch to think bigger. It couldn't be a future. Not when the world had come to an end.

Could it?

Now Furiosa was striding right in front of the stall. Patch could have called to her, but her usual lurid patter had evaporated. Instead, she rested a hand on her mate's shoulder. The Citadel group passed by without stopping, progressing into Gastown’s pipeworks and shadows. When they were gone, the watching crowd stayed still for a breath. Then, the streetscape dissolved into its usual chaos.

“What’d I tell you?” snapped the deferred customer.

Patch found herself grateful to that sphincter, drawing her back into her life of barter and banter. She pulled herself together. “I can dream, can’t I?”

Hardly anyone bought the first time they saw what Patch had. There’d been ten War Boys in the Citadel group, plus a dirty follower or two slinking through the crowd, providing extra backup. And she was pretty sure that one of the women with Furiosa, the tough little one, had turned back to look at Patch’s wares. If the Imperator didn’t come herself to barter, somebody else might. Someone with their own hopes about Furiosa. Patch smiled. “I can dream…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Verse notes:
> 
> Patch is watching Furiosa's arrival in Gastown in [Chapter 4 of Gastown Nights.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4515567/chapters/10382007)
> 
> The asshole customer is another OC of mine, Force from [Citadel Nights](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7560889) \- it's a long story and you'll see a lot of him. Maybe more than you want to, read the warnings!


	13. Hot or not

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the Fury Road, in the changed Citadel, three women debate an important question. The Immortan: _hot or not?_
> 
> All OCs - a former Wife, Tidda; a Milking Mother, Desperate; and the once-Wretched Rabbit. A piece of writing shrapnel, a little prequel to my long sex-in-the-Wasteland story [Citadel Nights](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7560889).

“Rabbit! We need you to settle an argument!”

The young woman looked across the Green Tower’s mess hall. Life after the Citadel's revolution never ceased to amaze her. Today, two Milking Mothers wanted _her_ opinion? She’d come a long way from being one of the lowest of the Wretched. Rabbit went over, absolutely determined to not lisp through her cleft lip, hidden behind a half-mask.

The first woman inclined her head in regal greeting. Tidda was a Milking Mother, and, to Rabbit’s eyes, as close to perfect as anyone could be. She was dark and curvy, crowned with intricate braids. She’d been in the Vault with the Sisters and Miss Giddy, as one of the Wives of the Immortan. Now, she was on the Council that helped run the Citadel. Exquisitely refined, Tidda could read and spoke two languages and belonged to a Before-time tribe that went back thousands of oldyears. Of course, one of the fighting feral recruits had fallen in love with Tidda right away.

Desperate was a Milking Mother, too, but she’d been Wretched until four days before the Fury Road. She hadn’t been just any Wretch. Lissom, wild-eyed, only a little lumped, she’d been a name. Often accused of thieving but never caught, one of the few women to win a blood fight, she had demanded – and received – an amazing _two handfuls_ of edible maggots for her favours. Of course, Des had talked her way up into the Citadel when she was in milk. Now she was on the Council, too, by default.

Des made space for Rabbit beside her. “Tidda, here, doesn’t believe me about a basic fact of life. She’ll believe both of us. We were Wretched together, you and me, right?” Rabbit nodded. Des hadn’t been too uppity among the Wretched for a word with Rabbit now and then. “And you and Tidda both listened to that old History Woman.”

Tidda gave Rabbit a gracious smile. “I am glad _someone_ was a friend to our wise teacher during her time among the Wretched.” She shot an edged look at Des.

“How can I help?” Rabbit asked.

Tidda sighed. “It is not that I do not believe you, Des, it is simply too depressing.”

Des pointed at Tidda. “What’s depressing is seeing you with some skinny stick when you could have someone chrome. You want somebody big and strong. Someone who can dish out the bash, get it back, and stay standing. They’ll protect you. Plus if you get bred up you’ll have strong pups.”

“And you say it doesn’t matter if they are scarred or broken or lumped…” said Tidda, wearily.

“That’s best of all! Because you know they're strong enough to be alive. Rabbit, back me up here. I’m talking about men like the Treadmill guards.”

Rabbit couldn’t help going starry-eyed. “The left Treadmill guard!”

Des said, smugly, “And that’s why every Wretch wanted to get next to the Immortan. Right, Rabbit?”

“Um…” Rabbit squirmed.

Tidda arced her head back. “Surely you did not count that tyrant as a desirable man.”

“He gave us water when the rest of the world left us for the crows. He took up the pups we couldn’t feed, the ones who deserved a chance. He bossed the lot of you. You were his Wives!” Desperate's eyes flashed with jealousy.

“By force!”

“That’s what you all say now!”

Tidda scolded, “No, Des, no! It was not like you imagine. Not like being with a true Wasteland fighter, one of your Wretched bashers or the skilled man you dismiss as a stick. Truly, it was a horror.” Tidda leaned forwards, dropping her voice. “Imagine being forced by a great rough beast. Twice my weight, and I was never small. Old and cunning, impossible to deceive. His hide sagging with tumors, his eyes piercing your soul. Panting and sweating! All filth and musk as he claims you, pinning you down without escape, snarling that you are his alone. An overwhelming monster! Then, unbelievably, he’s still not sated. He turns around and does it all again with another woman.”

Des looked glazed. “Mmm. Overwhelming. Yeah.”

"I'm sssorry." Rabbit lifted her eyes to Tidda. “I – I didn’t like the Immortan.”

Tidda’s smile flashed in triumph. “See! When you are freed from tyranny and brainwashing, the truth comes out. There is more than one choice, one pattern!”

Rabbit heard Des huff. Quickly, she added, “I liked Rictuth much better!” Then, she blushed. But there’d been no way to say the name of the Immortan's son without lisping.

The two women gave Rabbit their full attention in shock. “I thought he looked…” Rabbit paused, stuck. Rictus had been splendid and strong. But she’d thought he looked _lost_. Out of place amongst the Citadel’s strutting, terrifying war parties. The History Woman had drily noted that Rictus wouldn’t survive long without them. Rabbit knew what waited for the lost, in the Wasteland. Perhaps…misplaced? Out of step?

Before Rabbit could find a word that wouldn't make her lisp, Tidda said, kindly, “Looks, yes. Rictus was handsome. From a distance. But tyrants large and small are different up close.”

Des elbowed Rabbit with a wink. “Big and stupid. That works. And it goes with what I was saying!”

“Des, no,” Tidda moaned.

Rabbit murmured a respectful goodbye and stood up to leave, taking her plate. In the changed Citadel, women could talk all day about whatever they wanted. But taking her mask off to eat in public, when she had a choice? Rabbit couldn’t bring herself to be that immodest. 


	14. the real apocalypse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A reader request! After the story [_somebody out there_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9044507), what if Packer left the satellite station for a trip to the Citadel? In this short piece, he does, and finds that the real apocalypse is…the friends you make along the way.

Packer spent the drive to the road warriors’ settlement holding down the components of a radio.

The radio was a spare, a triple backup at the satellite station. The people who’d shown up from a post-nuclear settlement said they didn’t have one working, so the station had offered. It turned out the radio manual wasn’t half as helpful as Packer’s memorised frequencies and workarounds. The station, more inwards and defensive every year, let Packer go with the visitors on the promise of a report. What was it going to do to him out there? Kill him? He was seventy-one.

So now Packer hunkered down in the rear of a rickety Interceptor V8, his uniform the worse for wear, feeling every bump and rattle in his bones. He hoped both the radio and his hips still functioned when they arrived.

There was little talking in the noisy car. Packer didn’t miss it, taking in the landscape. Climate change had scraped off the Outback to uncover a primal desert beneath: drastic canyonlands and buttes, rainbows of stone, the dreamscape of his lost Utah youth. Gorgeous, if you didn’t remember plants. He got the feeling the drivers did.

One late afternoon, the drivers muttered, “Incoming.” Packer went on high alert. Two vehicles screamed in. Their drivers looked as crazy as the living mummies who’d pursued them half a day. These ones were bald, streaked black and white, in two rat rod vehicles spewing black exhaust. “Flippin’ heck!”

“No worries. Our people,” said the woman – Furiosa. Right now, she was driving, her mechanical left arm resting outside the window.

The rat rod tried to go ahead of them, but wasn’t fast enough. They wound up tailing, hammering their horn. Packer grinned. “Hey! La Cucaracha!”

The man, Max, spared Packer a baffled look. “It was an old song…” Packer trailed off. Sliding beside each other without connecting was typical of the drive. The pair spoke as rarely as they sipped water. The three of them got along best when they plain did stuff, repaired tires or shook the water tarps in the morning. Max saw that Packer knew his way around a desert. He mumbled warnings about crows, buzzards, sweeping tracks away. Furiosa was clearly biding her time. It was the price of this wild ride that Packer was about to be a catalyst at her settlement.

A butte knuckled up on the horizon; a second and third joined it. After days in the desert, the green outlining their plateaus seared Packer’s retinas. “Holy moly! You live up there?”

“You’ll see,” said Furiosa.

They coasted onto the start of a road, slowed. Packer saw an adobe village ahead, sheltered by the three buttes. That must be their home: the Citadel. Furiosa had told a few laconic stories. “We have some tech. We’re run by a Council. Some of us remember the Before-Time.” Packer stretched his arms, picturing a small town, good people, getting out of this rustbucket.

They went around a final curve. Furiosa said, “We’re here.”

Packer looked up. “Flamin’ jumpin’ Jehosophat!”

The adobe village was the ground floor of a city hewn _into_ the butte towers.

The centre of it all was carved into one butte: a huge aperture shaped like a skull, vines dripping around and below, a fall of green. Pipes bridged between the towers, cranes dipped down. From the butte at end of the village, a platform descended when chained cages of counterbalance boulders rose. Furiosa drove onto the platform like she owned it.

Getting out of the car at the top was sheer chaos. Packer gaped at the vast machine that drove the platform, the tattered survivors that stamped it to life, bald soldier boys mobbing their car. “Furiosa! Imperator! Wasteland sent you back, shiny and chrome!” Packer turned to Max, but Max had melted away. A shirtless, bald linebacker in sunglasses had replaced him, tall enough to look Packer in the eye. “Where’d Max go?”

“Back down with his car. Ain’t one to linger.”

“More a downstairs guy, huh?” Packer peered down at the adobe houses and felt that.

“I see you’ve met the Ace. He’ll look after you.” Everyone stilled for Furiosa’s cool voice. “Take him and his gear to the Wire Box. I’ll get Council to talk to him.” The boys swarmed, swept up the radio boxes, beckoned.

Packer loped after them. His blue uniform – heck, wearing a shirt - stood out like a hammered thumb here. But he and the Ace fell into a shared soldier’s stride easily.

The soldier boys spouted, adoringly, “You rode with our Imperator, full-life and half-armed!” “She lived, and died, and lives again!” “Warlord of the Many Mothers!”

Packer leaned in to the Ace. “She some cult leader?”

The Ace chuckled. “Not if she can help it. Don’t help when she keeps running off to the Wasteland and coming back alive, all Immortan-like.”

“What does that mean? And what about Max?” But the soldiers were still gabbling praise for Furiosa, and the question fell aside as they arrived.

The Wire Box was a triple-height room, dimness warmed with Edison bulbs, walls packed with an electronic junkyard. A cleared table and an aproned electrician waited. Each radio box was unpacked reverently, its cardboard and Styrofoam as marvellous as the technology inside.

“Well. It’s been a while.”

Packer turned. “I never met you before.” He would have remembered a sawn-off sunbaked Patrick Stewart in a macramé skirt completely covered in tiny word tattoos.

“Whereas I have met you. But you were a different person then. You were younger. You had different names. A settlement survivor who opened the door…to find the end of the world’s madness.”

The hair on Packer’s neck stood up. “Who are you? How old are you? What the heck is this Citadel?”

He was the History Man, and most of his verbosity went over Packer’s head. Packer was too shocked to learn History was close to his age. “You were twenty-five at the Fall: I was thirty…enough to make old men of us both. The Ace, here, is rising sixty. You look more his age to me. But then, I was out there in it.”

Packer stepped closer. “How was it?”

“Started out in a settlement myself. If you weren’t lucky, it was mad. Book burnings, roving militias, bikie gangs – one of them did for us. _Wordburger: the bogan shall inherit the earth._ After that, it was down to survival, salvage, and a sense of the absurd for us History People. We were a tribe. For a while.”

“What did you do before?”

History laughed, sonorous and bitter. “Before the Fall? I thought I was saving the world. Until your war showed me how wrong I was. We don’t save the world all at once. We do it piece by piece…What about you?”

“Military police at, uh, the satellite base. Got evac’d to the backup satellite base. That’s where I’ve been.”

“So I heard. You did a good job, there. Satellite ‘net stayed live for a surprising amount of time. I’m sorry to say we didn’t use it much.”

“Why not?”

History went harrowed. “Let’s just say…the news wasn’t good. No, it wasn’t good. We were holding on to our sanity as long as possible.” Packer nodded. He remembered that bad news, and the ghastly nights afterwards. He buried that by diving into radio setup.

Of course this was when Furiosa came back. She came with women. Two tough adventurers and two women wrapped in white, like they’d left a temple in a hurry. The soldier boys murmured in salute, “Sisters. Mothers.” The new audience made Packer’s hands sweat. The new women said nothing. Like Furiosa, they were biding their time.

Packer slid the last cable home. “This thing’s as ready as it’ll be.”

 “So if that’s a radio, who’ll you talk to?” asked the Ace.

The soldier boys cried, “Gastown! The Buzzards! The Before-Time! How ‘bout the moon?” One of the women laughed.

The History Man spoke last. “I have some ideas.”

The Ace frowned.  “You been holding out on us, History.”

“Like I was going to tell you lot?” The soldiers howled again, picking up on the banter, not the deeper meaning. History glanced at the waiting women. “But perhaps it’s time.”

Packer cleared his throat. “There’s where I’m from. Tell ‘em I’m arrived and…take it from there.” If it was working.

All the factions hushed to watch Packer. The soldiers, like him. The History – also like him. The tough women his lost daughter had wanted to be like. The ones whose white clothing promised something to believe in. He’d been here…maybe an hour? But he felt like to die at the thought of letting them down.

Packer wiped the sweat off his hands. Reached out, flicked the power switch. A radio fan uttered a surprised breath. The Citadel’s watchers leaned in, united. And Packer exhaled half a century’s worth of tension as the dashboard’s lights settled to life: green, green, green.


	15. Who killed the world?

It hadn’t been the worst day to be Wretched at the base of the Citadel. The Immortan had ranted and blustered and sent down water. The skies had been still: the air hadn’t burned their lungs. A Gastown delegation had driven in and out. Their leaking, smoke-belching vehicles left behind patches of sand stained with oil and guzz. A hundred pairs of Wretched hands had scooped up that sand. Now, as the Wasteland night came down, it was fueling camp stoves made of salvaged tins.

Miss Giddy, the tattooed History Woman, sat near one of those stoves. She and her tribesman, the History Man, had been asked to one of those campfires, to tell stories of the wonders of the Before-Time. The warped survivors of the Fall had oohed at tales of a land covered in green, traversed by cars, populated by beautiful people: like the Immortan’s realm above them, but for everyone.

The two old survivors winced at times. The pain of getting tattooed was nothing to the pain of memory. But it was important, to share the richness of what had been lost. One day, the History Woman hoped, the right person would hear the right story, and something would change.

A plaintive voice asked, “History People…if it’s so bad now, the world, how did it all go wrong? Where did it start?”

The History Woman lifted the talking stick. “I remember when it all went wrong. It came in the heart of winter, like tonight. And it was called Brexit.”

An interested murmur went around the group. “Brexit? He a Warlord?” someone asked.

“Brexit was an event. It happened far away. There was a mighty group of…” She paused, choosing her phrasing carefully. “Settlements. And one settlement put it to a vote: should they leave the mighty group? Cast visitors from the other settlements out, and keep their riches for their own? They put it to the vote and, from fear and misunderstanding, voted yes. The world saw this – the news was everywhere at once, sent by web and satellite – and despaired.”

Beside her, the History Man’s hand was swimming in the air, fairly begging for the stick. She handed it over. He sprang up. “One of the long-term implications of Brexit was that when the ocean’s thermohaline currents and ecosystems began to collapse the lack of international unity undermined efforts for ecological remediation throughout the Arctic. This led to increasing petroleum abuse, which brought about additional climate change, which jump-started the Water Wars. Then, a hundred or so days after Brexit, another settlement voted in someone who _was_ a warlord - Trump - for the same reasons. And what Brexit began, he wanted to finish."

The History Woman took the stick back quickly and hissed to him, "No Trump! There's _children_ here." She raised her voice. “From all that, it was the lack of unity among the people that made it a first step backwards for the world. The failure to work with each other.”

Another lean old man swayed up, at the opposite side of the circle. “Weren’t that! Weren’t the Brexit! Weren't th' orange hellbeast! Were before that! I know. I know when the end began.” His wild, remote eyes stared into the past. “It was when we lost.”

The Wretched crowd rumbled and nodded. For these stressed, hungry, weary people, this was more like it.

The man went on. “It was earlier in the Before-Time. When we lost seven tests against the Black Caps.”

Someone in the crowd said, “We lost a test.”

The old man covered his face in his hands. “Humiliation! Shame! The beginning of the end.”

“Who were the Black Caps?”

“They were up against us in the sportsball. But they had no right. No right to do what they did…”

The History People exchanged a look. Silently, Miss Giddy offered the History Man the stick.

“A bloody cricket game?” The History Man slumped down crosslegged again, gestured at the misunderstanding man. “That, right there, is why the apocalypse happened.” He stabbed the stick into the sand, despairing.

The History Woman plucked the stick up quickly, lest someone snatch it. “You’d think we’d know by now, to keep it simple.” She threw another handful of petroleum sand on the ‘barbie and mused, “Who killed the world?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Miss Giddy amongst the Wretched? It's part of my take of how she wound up at the Citadel - see my Tell of her tale in [Weave a Circle.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4229832/chapters/9566877)
> 
> It's true: the Australian cricket team suffered an ignominous shellacking [in early 2016](http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/cricket/76555030/five-records-australia-didnt-want-after-being-humiliated-by-the-black-caps) that got a lot of media time.


	16. A longshot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A War Boy is winding down into being an Old Boy, remembering what he shouldn't, as he watches the Gigahorse return to the Citadel - the Gigahorse alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A gift for WastelandBaird, based on [this prompt over here!](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/94825841) I wound up shifting the time of day but we've got the hat, the rifle, and your War Boy, Longshot, with his philosophical bent.

It wasn’t his hat.    
  
War Boys didn’t own much beyond what they carried. The battered old hat belonged to this Citadel lookout post. Longshot put it on when he started his shift on the red rock perch, wore it while guarding the stronghold, left it there when he walked away. That way, his War Boy brothers could shield their eyes, too. Besides, he didn’t need to stand out from the other War Boys. None of them did. That was Citadel law, the decree of the Immortan himself.    
  
By the same law, it wasn’t his high-scoped rifle, either.  
  
But he remembered where the things came from. And that was reason enough to follow Citadel law and lie low instead of standing out.  
  
Longshot scanned the dry wastes around the Citadel. He didn’t look at the Wretches unless he had to. The squirming mass of them turned his stomach. He might have been one of them, if things had gone badly, the day his Pa and him drove up to the Citadel and offered themselves. But Pa’s car had passed muster, and he had, too. The three of them, man, boy, and car, had all left their old names behind on the ground.    
  
Seven hundred days later, Pa hadn’t come back from a war party. He’d always kept track of Pa’s bush hat, though. Pa’s rifle, too. His own keen eye had earned his Citadel name, Longshot.  
  
The Citadel had been good to Longshot. He'd seen the place grow and change over thousands of days. New tunnels had been bored, new floors opened up in the stone. Out of Joe Moore’s nicknames, the one that settled on ol' Joe was the Immortan. His men and hangers-on morphed into Imperators and War Boys. Granted, there was some weird stuff, hard to be around, worse than the Wretches. For that, Longshot blamed the other two - the ones the Immortan called his brothers. The Bullet Farmer and his war machine. The People Eater and his big ideas. Those two couldn’t keep going without Joe and the good things he gave the world. Joe had more than one Wife? That didn’t sound bad, compared to what Longshot had heard about the People Eater.  
  
Idly, Longshot ran a hand over the hard lumps on his left arm. What were they, anyway? All they did was grow. Longshot didn’t feel sick, not compared to the boys who went down with the shrinking fever or lumps everywhere – what Pa would have called cancer. The Organic Mechanic had looked them over and shrugged. “No way to know for sure. Congratulations. You’re a War Boy.”    
  
On some unmarked day, Longshot had gone from being a War Boy to a War Boy with something more: an Old Boy. If you hadn’t died historic, after a certain point, you became historic yourself.  When that time came, you stepped back, kept your head down. Old Boys kept to their War Boy paint as part of that. Hidden in plain sight, they looked after the Pups, kept the Boys in line. Old Boys watched as younger men, brash and unmarked, full-lives, became Imperators. Soon enough, those ones took the fall for the Immortan or slit each other’s throats. It was starting to worry Longshot.  
  
Because he knew what most of the Citadel, under the Immortan's hand, had forgotten: that fathers died.    
  
One day, the Immortan wasn’t going to be Immortan any more. Then what? Would it be Corpus and Rictus, the weak wise man muttering orders to the strong mindless one? Would the Imperator’s simmering rivalry culminate in a new Immortan being named? Today, Longshot guessed Imperator Prime would be sitting pretty after they’d shredded Furiosa.    
  
Imperator Furiosa had brought it all to a head, with her unheard-of theft of the Immortan's Wives. The place had cleared out of every fighter to hunt them down. The only War Boys left behind were those too sick to do war, and those who’d stepped away from it, into the Citadel’s shadows.    
  
Longshot squinted at the landscape again through the scope. His eyes weren’t what they used to be. Sooner or later, he’d have to figure out what he was doing next, what he’d slide into –  
  
Something was out there, to the east. A spire of red dust, rising like bloodsmoke.    
  
Longshot adjusted, focused the scope. It was the Gigahorse, the Immortan’s own ride! Longshot grinned. The Rig was something, and Furiosa and her Old Boy, the Ace, both to be reckoned with. But ‘course the old man would make it back. He waited to see who else was coming over the horizon.  
  
The horizon stayed clear. The Gigahorse was alone.  
  
This wasn’t right. The Immortan never rode alone.  Even if the Immortan was in there, injured, there’d be outriders. The guard post had a signal mirror. A few flashes would bring the Citadel's defenses to life. The post’s rifle, too, was heavy in Longshot's sweating hands, fully loaded. When the Gigahorse took the turn into the Citadel courtyard, its occupants would be within range. 

Here it was, the Immortan's pride and joy, more battered than he'd ever seen it. Longshot couldn’t say who was in it, only who wasn’t: no Immortan, no Rictus, no Prime. None of the shadows in the vehicle, heads and necks, had their silhouettes. Whoever it was, they were rolling slow, uncertain behind the wheel. It was all enough to aim a killing shot.

Longshot's signal mirror stayed untouched. He left the safety on, watching through the rifle scope as they sputtered up to the Treadmill.

Because...

Maybe whoever was in the Gigahorse would hear him out, if he told them the rifle had been his own pa’s. That nobody could shoot it like he could. That an old boy was still a worthwhile War Boy.

That it was his hat.


	17. The choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Dag gives birth to her baby - and there’s choices to be made by the Dag, and, in the future, the child.

Capable frowned. Here at the Dag’s birth bed, more than one thing was wrong.

Only three of the Sisters were present. Toast was away doing war with Furiosa. They all missed her reassuring knowing. Outside the door of the Dag’s quarters, they could hear the murmur of the Citadel’s gardeners, the Green Thumbs, holding vigil for their garden goddess. The sound was an unwavering pressure. This child mattered too much to them and, Capable feared, not enough to the Dag. 

The Dag had never expected to carry the Immortan's last breeding to term, but she had. Nobody had dared say that the Immortan’s child would probably be a solid, hefty baby, but it was. The Dag was translucent with exhaustion after a day in painful labor. It was all over. Everyone involved was still alive. 

Now, Melita, the Vuvalini healer, had whisked the Dag’s newly delivered baby away too quickly, to examine it for too long. With brittle cheer, she had declared the obvious. “It’s a baby, all right! Let me do some tests.” Capable had caught a glimpse of clean-looking skin, and heard a thin wail that subsided into tiny noises, but that was it.

The Dag had let Melita take the infant away as if it didn’t matter at all. She was determinedly hiding her face in Cheedo’s shoulder. Gently as she could, Capable asked, “Don’t you want to know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“What, find out whether it’s going to be Warlord Junior? Or if she’ll have to deal with what we’ve suffered?” When the Dag put it like that, Capable didn’t know what to say. 

Melita’s aide, a sunny Milking Mother, declared, “Right. Afterbirth time, more work to do.” The Dag began to lever herself to sit again, hindered more than helped by Cheedo clinging desperately to her dearest friend.

Capable went over to Melita, sponging the baby clean by kerosene light. “Tell us. Is something wrong?”

“I wouldn’t say wrong. Apgar’s good…breathing is sound…ten fingers, ten toes…two eyes…”

Capable leaned over, hands on her hips, and demanded, “Show me!”

Melita pulled Capable in. “I’ll show you. Then, you tell me.” She lifted one smeared finger for silence, then parted the baby’s legs.

Capable leaned in and paused. She dropped her own voice. “I can’t tell, either.”

“All the reactions are healthy,” said Melita, dryly. “To give a Citadel diagnosis, the baby's a full-life. For now.”

Tentatively, Capable stroked the baby’s cheek. Its funny pink face was topped with the lightest, palest plume of hair, standing up as it dried. When she touched, it turned and opened infinite eyes in her direction. A tiny hand flailed. Capable shifted her touch, and was thrilled by the newborn grip embracing her finger. 

Capable squared her shoulders. “I’ll tell them.” She extracted her finger, reluctantly, and scooped up some swaddling. Circling the fabric around the baby, she cradled it in her arms to cross the room, passing the Milking Mother conveying the afterbirth to the healer. 

“You have a healthy baby. There’s a catch. It’s not a boy or a girl.”

The Dag went even paler. Cheedo said, “It’s neither? A mutant?”

“I’m not sure. Melita says the baby’s reacting like a full-life.”

Capable tilted the child to meet the Dag’s searching eyes. As she did, she mused, “Not a boy. So he won’t ever be a Warlord. Not the way Joe wanted, anyway.” 

Cheedo breathed, “Not a girl. So nobody can ever…force her to be a Wife. Not like we were.” She sat up and called, “Melita! Can something - someone like this have children?”

"A good pronoun is _they_. Can they ever have children?" Melita came over, followed by the Milking Mother. “Not this one. Not with what we have here.” 

The Dag finally spoke. “No more Joes.” She began to smile, with her usual edgy brightness.

Capable sighed. “The Citadel’s cults are going to love that.”

“What happens when the baby’s older?” asked Cheedo.

“When it’s time, they choose what they want to be called. How they want to live.” Melita went on. “A child like this is going to need some extra care, first. Some sheltering. If you aren’t up for it, there’s empty cradles in the Milking Room.” The Milking Mother nodded. 

Everyone looked at the Dag.

“To be able to choose. To be anything.” The Dag leaned forwards, illuminated. “Give me – give me my baby!”


	18. The People Eater's Guide to Pleasing People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Bullet Farmer and the People Eater have one final conversation as Major Kalashnikov and Richard Smith.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Warnings for body horror and cannibalism references.

“Is it over yet?”

From the entrance to a grimy, echoing Gastown office, the Bullet Farmer looked down on the man they called the People Eater. Framed at an enormous, scarred desk between two stacks of ledgers, he seemed a consummate accountant. His ruthless eyes and downturned slot of a mouth were, sensibly, free of any optimism.

The Bullet Farmer gave the truth. “Not yet. No word of a birth or a change at Joe’s. Filthy babies.”

One corner of the People Eater's mouth twitched upwards. “Gin? Bourbon? Bundy?” The offer meant something rare. For a time, they would be Major Kalashnikov and Richard Smith.

Kalashnikov had left the Bullet Farm at dawn, three hours ago. “The last one.”

Richard heaved himself up from the desk’s chair. “You know, of course, he’s let the Bag of Nails out. I suppose he was tired of having his precious War Boys picked off by those delightful Buzzards.”

His heavy limping to his drinks cabinet revealed his barbarism. Kalashnikov was used to the worn suit over exposed nipple clamps, the nose prosthetic. Like salvaged liquor at midmorning, it passed for normal in this decayed world. What caught his eye today was the bandolier of raw human skin Richard wore, adorned with a few extracted teeth. A trophy from one of Richard’s enemies or rivals, he decided, downed after ungodly tortures. An improvised catheter bag sloshed against Richard’s suit leg. When he turned, Kalashnikov saw blossoms and nubs of some illness across his scalp and ears. Kalashnikov registered it and set it aside in the same instant. For the Bullet Farmer, there was only one disease, not being well enough to work or fight. And one reliable shot was the cure…

“Nothing like hordes of gibbering cultists to give a settlement an atmosphere! It wouldn’t be the same if the living godhead’s son wasn’t greeted by the largest possible grateful hordes.”

Richard had always been a survivor. Kalashnikov remembered the day they’d met in the Wasteland. Kalashnikov had been Joe Moore’s right hand man. Richard had been, at first, one more sunburned, near-naked slave. But, run down on the road, Richard had smiled insouciantly, like he’d won some subtle game, and traitored his old masters the instant he could. A day later, after taking them to the Citadel, he’d been calling Joe ‘brother’. He had held power Before, and still carried its entitled knack, at the ready to make the apocalypse his own.

For Kalashnikov the end of the world had been a relief: the annihilation that his wary migrant people had always been waiting for. Richard’s leer back then had given him the lead-gut feeling that it wasn’t going to finish for a while. It had been long enough ago that Kalashnikov had occasionally failed to listen to his soldier’s intuition. He didn’t make that mistake any more.

“A pity for the Buzzards he doesn’t send the War Boys out until they’re too old to be really toothsome.”

Kalashnikov was torn, then and now, between reluctant fascination and wanting to kick Richard’s teeth in.

Richard passed Kalashnikov two fingers of Bundaberg rum, pre-apocalyptic and priceless. Pouring himself the same measure of bourbon, he stopped in front of the desk, leaning his broad behind against its edge. He snapped his fingers and pointed. The room’s slave slithered into position, coiling at Richard’s feet.

Kalashnikov would barely have noticed if the slave hadn’t flicked the briefest glance at him. His instincts twinged. That was a sharpshooter’s eye, young and keen, wasted in this pampered nest. Richard thumped his right foot down on the slave’s back, above a Gastown brand. The naked extremity propped on his human furniture was distorted, vastly swollen. Toes and sores alike winked obscenely from flushed, strained folds of flesh. Decay and delay made manifest, awaiting an inevitable amputation. It completed the horror that Richard’s left foot was still sheathed in a tidy wingtip.

Kalashnikov wrenched his eyes away from the ugliness. “Something’s going to go wrong.”

Richard sighed. “That we are having this ludicrous conversation at all, that I am obliged to treat Joe’s breeding sow seriously, shows that something already has gone wrong.”

“No way to go right. Even if he gets his brat, it’s too late. He’ll die and leave a mewling toddler as his heir.”

“Jealous of his splendid breeder sponging up his attention?” Richard took a meditative sip of his bourbon, shot him a canny look. “I didn’t mind his little harem when they were his perversion. You didn’t, either.”

Kalashnikov groused, “I didn’t mind when there was hope.”

A heavy silence fell.

Richard clunked his glass of liquor on the desk. Then he inhaled through his metal nose, fueling himself. “Hope? HOPE? You’ve hit the bulls’-eye, Kalashnikov, with one angry shot. Hope is what has gone wrong. The world was moving towards catastrophe before. We are doomed to extinction now. Today’s brats will never know what we do. We are the last authorities. Joe’s lost sight of that. He set himself up as this wasted land’s hope – promising refuge, salvation, a perfect son. There he is now, surrounded by lepers and mutants, adored by morons who can’t even pronounce ‘immortal’. Setting himself up to fall like Icarus. Believing that his Citadel is the centre of the earth, the sun rotating around it, when his armadas are nothing without us."

“We are a Triumvirate! Bread and circuses make each of our worlds go around. The V8s and the good old sausage sizzle! Well, it shan’t be me on the grill. Do you know why?” Richard gestured at the rusting industrial tangle outside the window. “This place makes sense. Those who produce are compensated. The world’s young savages beat down my gates to offer me what I want. And it all happens without a cult as a rationale. I’m a businessman. I don’t promise what I can’t deliver. Flesh, blood, oil, metal, value. Never hope.”

Kalashnikov nodded impassively, secure in his own rightness. He knew, where his bones met his bullet teeth, that they were living through the last blows of the ultimate war. His Bullet Farm was a salvaged piece of military perfection. “The only hope I offer is discipline.”

Richard’s eyes brightened. “Which has its charms!” Kalashnikov didn't rise to the bait. Richard shrugged. “Your people and mine alike know nothing matters but _now_. We’re civilized as long as we extract the last value this world has. By the time that’s over, we are, too. If I am on the grill, I shall, at least, be well done.”  

Kalashnikov frowned. “Only way to go down is fighting. And not alone.”

“I agree with the last part,” Richard leered. He fingered his bandolier.

Kalashnikov curled his lip. “Be justice if you get grilled. Barbecued by some feral.”

That won a laugh from Richard. He lifted his glass again. “There’s the Kalashnikov I know. To brothers in arms!”

Kalashnikov did not return the toast.

Richard shrugged. “Another month or so of this ludicrousness: another repulsive stillbirth: he’ll come around. All the more so for having his hopes crushed. And we shall be a true Triumvirate again.”

Kalashnikov sipped his liquor. As always, he felt the sting of it around his bullet teeth: the ones that were most alive.

The cadet he’d left on guard in the hallway bashed through the door. “Bullet Farmer, sir! People Eater, I mean, Gastown Warlord, sir! Full callout, sirs, for both of you, highest alert from the Citadel!”

The Bullet Farmer drained his glass to the burning dregs. His soldier’s intuition twinged again. He felt deep relief. Whatever was happening, it was about to be over at last.


End file.
